Plant pegs

It's Mothering Sunday here in the UK.. I hope everyone is having a lovely day!

I've made some plant pegs to take up to the cemetary with me today.. and my little boy has made one too!

I used a darling stamp from Stampotique Originals called Lovebirds and coloured the image with watercolour paints for a soft effect.

I also made a Dragonfly plant peg too.. my little boy always takes a picture or something with him when we go to visit Nan & Gramps stone at the cem and so he made a stick too.. knowing that his Grandparents always had a dog (altho.. not in the colours he choose.. he said he made the dog bright so Nana could see him from the stars!)

Here is what our finished display looks like..

click to enlarge (to see Tom's dog!)

Tom's dog stamp.. Tail Wagger


My children know how much I love to take photographs and have given me this most fantastic frame this morning!

 click for close-up
I hasten to add these aren't my 3 altho my youngest laughed
when I asked what he was doing in a nappy!


Thank you for calling. Have a great day. Gez.xx


~♥~

Crazy 4 Challenges sponsored by Stampotique Originals

Stampotique Originals are proudly sponsoring Crazy 4 Challenges. 

Create something green and have a chance to win a $30 gift certificate for Stampotique Stamps.

Here is my tag

 Stamps used:Old Timey Frog, Numeric

and

Honeycomb background 

What a super challenge.. I am quite 'in to' green at the moment!

 Hope to see you over at Crazy 4 Challenges

Have a great day and enjoy St Patrick Day if you are celebrating.

Happy crafting, Gez

~♥~

Daring Cardmakers ~ Lucky Green challege

I'm doing the double today! Two posts in one day! It makes up for last week I suppose!!

It's time for another challenge over at the Daring Cardmakers challenge blog and today's new theme is Lucky Green.

It's Samm's turn to set the challenge this week and this is what she had to say..

Yes, St Patricks day is on its way, so I challenge you to make a card using the main colour as green and feature 'luck' somewhere on your card. It's one of those colours we hardly ever get to use so I hope it gets you all digging around in your crafty stash and creating frantically!

I seem have been using green lots lately and I think it could be my new pink!!!

Here is my DT card..

 Stamps used: Sweetmoves, Swirl Stalks and Abstract Foliage

Boy! This was fun to make.. lots of swooshing and inky fingers always makes me happy!

I decided to add a detachable charm as a little keepsake and made the card for my daughter while she is studying for her A levels at college.

Thank you for calling today. I hope the sun is shining wherever you are and you have a great day. Gez.

Take A Word

It's ages and ages since I've joined one of the Take a Word challenges.

When I saw my crafty friend Nellie's gorgeous take on this weeks word I knew straight away I wanted to play!

This weeks word is.. Green Here is a tag I have made for the challenge.

close up.. I decided to mount the dragonfly onto 3D foam pads

 click to enlarge

 click to enlarge

Stamps used: Dragonfly, Journey Collage

and

Honeycomb background

Thank you for calling and leaving a comment if you get the chance. Happy crafting, Gez.

Stampotique Designers Challenge #50 ~ Wearable Art

It's that time again.. .. time to be inspired and join the Stampotique Designers as they challenge you to create something for the latest challenge over at the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog.

Val is the new hostess for the latest challenge Wearable Art  and here is what she had to say..

 Valerie would like to see what fun ideas you can come up with as you create something that you can wear - perhaps even a matching set!  Will you take something apart and rebuild it, alter an existing item or will you start from scratch?  And then of course, the real test will be - will you wear it!?! :)   

What a fantastic challenge!

I've made a bag charm using a fantastic NEW range of stamps from the very talented artist Janet Klein.

 side view

 Oooooh.. this was the best fun ever to make! 

Thank You Janet for sharing your amazing drawing talents with us..xx

and of course to Carol & Jim for making them into stamps ♥

To make the bag charm first of all, I printed the stamps onto white shrink plastic using black Stazon, coloured the images and anxiously covered my ears while I used the heat gun!! (always a few near heart attacks involved watching the images shrink!!) NOT forgetting to punch a small hole into the plastic before shrinking.. (for the ring) thats the important bit!

I used a collection of beads and brass charms and hung them on various size lengths of chain and added some co-ordinating ribbon to the keyring.

Stamps used:

Alice

Queen of Hearts

Mad Hatter

Rabbit

Chessy

Catepillar

Mushroon Forest

SO, what will you create? I hope you can join us..

The Design Team are also excited to announce a Guest Designer call over on the challenge blog.. would you like to join us for a whole month?

The winners are also announced from our latest gorgeous challenge Purple/Pink with black, was it you? My apologies for not getting the chance to visit everyone.. I've been without internet for almost a week.. I plan to catch up with everyone's creations soon.

Thank you for calling and leaving a comment if you get the chance. 

Happy crafting, Gez ♥

Thrilled!

While wading through my 500 outstanding emails.. I discovered I've been picked to be a Ginger Gem over on the Gingersnap Creations.

 Oh! Thank You so much..xx

(sorry it took me so long to call.. I have been offline for almost a week.. not my choice :0(

Gingersnap's liked my tag for their Words of Wisdom challenge

You can visit my original post HERE

Thank you for calling today.. have a great Monday. Gez.xx

~♥~

I'm Back!

.. have you missed me?? ;-)

I woke up last Tuesday morning to find we had no internet connection.. Wednesday lunchtime a BT engineer very kindly sorted out the problem at the pole outside but unknowingly cut off our telephone and didn't spot what had happened!!!! We finally got sorted yesterday.. 5 days without internet.. not nice!!!

I've got nearly 500 emails now sat in my inbox, over 500 Garden of Time game requests and I have so missed challenges and blog hopping.. will I ever catch up!

One of the challenges I missed was last Friday.. the awesome Daring Cardmakers have a fabulous new challenge Tessellation

Here is my DT card..

I have used some scrummy spring papers by Carte Blanche and had a go at making my own flowers.. I love them! I will definately be making more!

Hope you can join the Daring Carmakers new challenge..

Off to make a start catching up.. thanks for calling.. have a great day.. Gez xx

Life Book ~ Feb 2012

It's been a while since I posted any pages from my Life Book.. mainly, because I've fallen behind but continue to work on at my own speed.. life is rather turbulant at the moment to say the least..thank you to everyone for their kind wishes on my last blog post..xx

Week 8 of Life Book sees us celebrating positve choices through layering with Mystele.. I don't know about positive choices.. I am working on that! 

Mystele is a wonderful teacher and has certainly given me some inspiration for positive healing.. life is scarey at times isn't it..

So here was my first layer.. for me... getting it all out! (sorry about the fuzzing!!)

Time for more layers.. Neo-colours, gesso, and spray paints through a stencil..

By this time I forgot to take any more pics.. I was busy looking for paper scraps!

I painted over my paper scraps with acrylic paints and used my fingers getting lovely and messy and lost in the process!

Time for even more fun.. looking for shapes that jump out.. 'pulling' art..

I actully turned my page upside down.. I could see the shape of a figure.. and a patch of paper (which was top left, turned into a vase, bottom right!)

upside down page!

It was now I realised I had forgotten to take photos.. I sketched out my shapes using a pencil.. it was fantastic just to get lost in the process.. art journaling is great for the soul ♥♥♥

Here's my finished page

She is total whimsey and random!

It was a learning curve for me to accept.. I nearly painted over her!

Mystele encouraged us to add stamping and ephemera..

The flower was nabbed from an old card! 

 I used my favourite stamped called

Journey Collage available from Stampotique Originals

..it is all about the journey to me..

Many thanks for calling and leaving a comment if you get the chance,

embrace your layers.. good and bad..xx

My first doodled watercolour tag!

There's no point being happy! I get rained on!

A tag I made last night while feeling sorry for myself!

I doodled.. I painted.. do I feel better.. 

..... not today :(


I'll pick myself up again.. .. .. 

Daring Cardmakers ~ Marie Antoinette challenge

The Daring Cardmakers are at it again! These ladies are an incredible group of crafters with the best challenges ever!

They've managed to pull something out of me that I didn't know was there and I love being a part of this incredible team.. thanks again for having me..xx

Here is my card for this weeks challenge..

I have used a great teacup template from Stampington.. I knew straight away I wanted to use it for this challenge.

The back ground paper and main images are from the brilliant Graphics Fairy blog to which I am going to link my card to their brag Monday post on Monday! (I seem to have missed this weeks brag!)

The little chandelier was a freebie stamp from Craft Stamper magazine which I stamped in black Versafine and clear embossed.

I hope you can join in with this Dare.. you might just surprise yourself like I did!

Wishing everyone a great weekend. Happy crafting, Gez ♥

NOT QUITE SURE WHAT BLOGGER IS UP TO.. I CAN'T POST THIS CHALLENGE WITHOUT IT WIPING THE REST OF MY OTHER POSTS.. The challenge is now closed but I still wanted to blog my card so I am tagging it onto here..!

The Daring Cardmakers are here today with a brand new challenge.

This week it's the third of our First Friday of the Month Colour Combo Challenges and this time it's Kathy's turn to choose the colours:

Caramel, Pale Lemon, Duck-egg Blue

and a touch of Gold

 

Just in case you need a little more colour-inspiration here's a fabulous photo
to get you in the mood: